Despite the fact that when I was younger I had a crappy life, hearing 90's music, especially old rap, rock, pop and Top 40 songs of the time, it gives me pleasant memories before I got older and life got complicated. I remember Kasey Kasem on American Top 40 over the weekends and listening to her songs was peaceful and made the world seem brighter. Many of my friends make fun of me for liking old 90's music, but it gives me a sense of pleasure of the "good ol' days"
I always liked Robyn's music videos and music, and she was one of my favorite artists back then. So to see her back and see that she has an album coming out makes me excited. I hope her stuff is just as good as it was when I first heard her, her music had life and was exciting.I was reading her new website, which in her bio explained her disappearance.
Robin Miriam Carlsson was born in Stockholm in 1979. She spent the first seven years of her life touring with her director father and actress mother in their Constructivist-inspired theatre company. At the age of 13 she was discovered by Swedish pop singer Meja when singing a sad, self-written song about her parents’ divorce in a school workshop and was immediately signed to BMG. A debut album of R&B-influenced pop in 1995 saw her paired with future Britney-hitwrangler Max Martin, and the global success of the sweet, soulful single ‘Show Me Love’ in 1997 cemented Robyn as an international pop star.
Shellshocked by the lack of artistic control offered by her label, however, Robyn migrated to Jive records for her third album, but felt disillusioned by their attempt to ship her to America to be shoehorned into the pre-fabricated Xtina template that was depressingly omnipotent in 2002.
“I think the third record I made was a big compromise,” she says. “I felt like it wasn’t fun anymore. Once you make the record and you give it to the record company, it’s not your record anymore! And I hated that situation. “I was going backwards. I wasn’t doing what I wanted to.”In 2003, Robyn returned home, defeated, to Stockholm. Upon returning, she stumbled across a new CD by a mysterious local brother-sister duo. The CD, titled ‘Deep Cuts’, was a passionate, hallucinatory reading of pop music carved from geometric blocks of pure texture. Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer called themselves The Knife, and with ‘Deep Cuts’ they had sketched a blueprint for a kind of abstract future pop. “I was amazed by it,” gasps Robyn. “I thought it was the best thing I’d heard in years. I just felt like wow this is really what I’ve always been looking for – and not only was it good, it was Swedish.”
Energised by the potential atom-splitting that could occur if she harnessed her own piercingly honest pop to The Knife’s uncompromising, peculiarly Swedish energy source, Robyn approached Karin and Olof to work on a potential single.
The result was ‘Who’s That Girl’ – unquestionably one of the best pop singles of the past five years. Strapping herself into the very heart of The Knife’s towering, architectural synthpop – a shifting, interlocking grid of colour and beats, hard enough to break your fists on – Robyn emptied all of her frustration, insecurity and desperation. The lyrics, specifically, railed against her contractual purgatory, but ‘Who’s That Girl’s loaded despair resonates powerfully with anyone – any girl¬¬ – left beaten by the capriciousness of gender or image politics. In the song, Robyn soars. Her anger is rocket fuel for the titanium-strong music which encases her, projects her, makes her indestructible. Although Robyn had always written songs, this stark piece of brutalist pop should be considered The First Robyn Song.
Unbelievably, her label hated it.
“They just thought it was weird,” sighs Robyn. “They just didn’t understand it. I guess they didn’t consider it to be pop music, which I think is crazy. It’s TOTALLY pop music! Modern, inventive music – that’s what pop music should be.”I love you Robyn!
http://music.aol.com/video/show-me-love-sessions/robyn/2109290
No comments:
Post a Comment